So you want to start breeding? You'll be so glad that you decided too!
It really is fun to see the beautiful guppies YOU raised, and when you win
an award at a show with one of you most beautiful
little guppy guy or gal, you feel possitivly great! These next
few paragraphs will give you a breif description on how to maintain a proper
breeding area.

To maintain one strain of guppies (like I do), you will need at least
6 tanks. Or, in my case, I divided one of my tanks. Some people
say this isn't a good way to breed, but its worked fine for me. Their
are three main ways to breed your guppies, but I prefer the easier and
safest method; Linebreeding. I will explain more about this later on.

Most breeders, including myself, use bare bottom tanks with
box filters. This helps to let you know how dirty the tank is, and
the filter will help with keeping the water areatied and clean. I
use a 5 gallon tank when I first recieve my trio of guppies to put them
in. I leave the male with my females for about 2-3 weeks, that way
I will be sure they mated, then I move him to another tank and seperate
the females into their own 5 gallon tank covered in plants (but no
rock!). This will be where they drop the fry.

I use the method of Linebreeding, like I stated above. What I do,
is I use one of my best males, and two of my best females and label
my two females as either my A line or my B line. Then I continue down
the lines using the brother to sister method, until about the 5th or 6th
generation, then I cross the two together. My best A male to my best
B female, and visa-versa then I start the whole process over again using
different letters.

Aproximatly 28 days after their first mating, the females should
drop young. After she is finished giving birth, I remove her immediatly,
for, of course, she will eat the young.

I first start my culling the very day the babies are born; any
fry with misshaped bodies or backs, any that are too dark in color
are quickly removed. This goes on day after day, until I have the
very best of my guppy strain.

When the fry are first born, I feed them crushed up dried brine
shrimp, for they are very hungry little guys. After that, I try
to feed them around every 2-4 hours, but of course, that is almost
immpossible to keep up, but I feed them as soon as I can. I feed
my fry the following:

Another great food is live brine shrimp. I also sometimes fix
up little "specialties" made fresh from scrapes for my baby gups.
You should only feed your guppies very often the first month of the fry's life,
for this is when they put their energy into growing, and the food
will help them to grow more. After the first month you can slow down
to about 4-5 feedings a day.

Water changes should be made every 2-3 days. This will provide
the guppies always with the freshest of water, and they will live
to be healthier. Also, you should clean out the bottom of the tank when
you see lots of excess food on it. Your filter should be changed
about every month, to keep the water pure and clean.

I don't really know by experence if lighting helps your guppies
to grow, but I have heard it does. I provide my fry with about 5
hours, like the adults, of light per day. It would still be a good
idea to have a hood with a lighting fixture.

You can start sexing your fry at about 2 weeks of age. I, myself,
get rid of all the lower quality females and males, then I pick out my
breeders for the next lot and sell the rest of my gups. I don't sex
mine until about 1-2 months, but it would probably be a good idea
to sex them as early as possible.

I hope this information has helped you to get started in breeding
these wonderful animals. But just remember to be patient, and also
remember to get a good strain from a good breeder, if you start off wrong,
you could just end up wasting your time and producing worse and worse
fish, but, if you start out right, you will be glad you got into the
hobby of breeding and you will be greatly rewarded with beautiful
fish.

If you have any further questions about breeding, or if I left
something out, please e-mail me at: GuppyGal30@hotmail.com